Force-forged
by Mercuric
Summary: Afghanistan wasn't the first time he'd had to rescue himself from terrorists wanting weapons.


Disclaimer: _The Avengers_ isn't mine. No copyright infringement intended.

Tag(s): Harm to Children, Not Canon Compliant, References to Past Harm to Children

* * *

**"The marks humans leave are too often scars." – John Green, _The Fault in Out Stars_**

* * *

_"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"_

..

If Tony had a thought, it was that these guys were smarter than the last ones. They'd rammed into his ride on the driver's side—his mind had done the math in a few short seconds, and given the velocity with which they were hit as well as the mass, Grants was dead, no two ways about it—and two muscled men had used a crowbar to pry the door open and smothered him with chloroform while he was still disoriented.

Definitely smarter.

When he woke up, his hands were handcuffed behind him, and the metal was digging into his wrists.

"How are you, Anthony?" a middle-aged man asked. From the lines and angles of his face, Tony estimated the man was anywhere from his early thirties to mid-forties. Approximately twenty-four percent of the man's weight was muscle, and if he'd done his calculations right—and he _always_ did—the man was somewhere between five-nine and six feet tall.

"Can you understand me?" Muscles asked, feigning concern.

He didn't speak.

"Ah, my men must've been too rough with you." He tsked. "I'm truly sorry for that, Anthony."

When he still didn't respond, the corners of Muscles's lips dipped down two millimeters.

"Things will go much smoother if you cooperate with us, Anthony."

_"You may be a genius, Anthony, but you're still nothing but a child. You're _weak,_ and I will not let your weakness ruin Stark Industries. People will always try to break you, to _control_ you, so you must always be on your guard. _Never_ let your walls down."_

_Approximate probability of injury: sixty-four percent._

Muscles backhanded his cheek.

_Revised approximate probability of injury: ninety-seven percent._

"I must admit, Anthony, that that didn't hurt me nearly as much as it must've hurt you, so if you don't cooperate, I'm afraid I can do much worse."

_Approximate probability of usage of full first name to goad into speaking: forty-eight percent._

The tactic held some merit, he supposed. He hadn't gone by Anthony since he was two—he wasn't exaggerating; since he was literally two years old, his dad had been making damn sure that he was always introduced as Tony—so it made sense for one to think that the use of his full first name might provoke some reaction.

He said nothing.

Then, Muscles grabbed him by the roots of his short hair and _yanked._

_"Never show them pain, Anthony. Never show them just how weak you are."_

He didn't yelp or cry out in pain, although he _did_ have to bite down on his lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood but close enough to it.

"You're testing my patience, Anthony."

_Revised approximate probability of usage of full first name to goad into speaking: sixty-one percent._

"You wouldn't want what happened to that driver of yours to happen to you, do you?"

_Approximate probability of lie: ninety-nine percent._

They wouldn't kill him, he knew that. He was too valuable, either for money—he didn't remember it, being kidnapped for ransom, but he knew _of_ it—or for weapons. They had no reason to kill him. As for Grants … He'd never liked the man. He had a sneaking suspicion that Grants had been putting little bits of poison into his drinks. After all, Grants's brother had died in Vietnam because of Agent Orange, something his dad had worked on and had been the driving force of during the Vietnam War.

What better way to get revenge than on the son of one of the creators of the very thing that killed your brother? An eye for an eye and all that.

Too bad Grants hadn't thought his little assassination attempt through because if he had, if he'd put any effort into learning Tony's daily routine, he would've known that Tony didn't eat or drink anything that he didn't personally see prepared and served. If anyone other than the cook went anywhere near his food or drinks, he threw it out, no exceptions.

Honestly, if you were going to assassinate someone, at least put _some_ effort into it.

"I know you don't," Muscles continued, taking his silence as a no. "That's why you have to give me something to work with."

He remained silent for several minutes and counted the seconds because from the twitch of Muscles's right eyebrow, the man was seconds away from sna—

His head snapped back when Muscles's fist slammed into it, and the numbers suddenly _multiplied_ in his head, giving him numbers of the possibilities of broken noses, split lips, and bruises on his face. He hid his wince. The punch, that wasn't anything new. His training had covered that (and more), so the punch, as unwelcomed as it was, was useless against him.

The numbers, however, were not. They were nothing more than whispers, but there were just so many of them that they combined to make an ear-splitting cacophony. He was used to them, welcomed them on occasion, but at times like this, they were more of a bane than a boon.

Tony had done experiments before, trying to determine the exact length of time he could go without designing or building anything. He'd hit a week before he'd relapsed and the numbers conquered his senses and thoughts again.

(He'd woken up to his dad hovering over him, looking equal parts furious and relieved. His dad had made him promise not to do that experiment again, and since he only had one data set, Tony had scrapped the project altogether. There was no point in using only _one_ data set to obtain information.)

So he had about a week—maybe less depending on how long he'd been unconscious—before the inevitable happened. A week to get freed and/or find something to design and/or build.

"Look here, _Anthony,_" Muscles said, yanking him by his hair again. "You build me my bombs, and you just _might_ come out of this without any more injuries."

_Revised approximate probability of lie: ninety-nine percent._

..

_"Do not expect to be saved, Anthony. When, not if, terrorists kidnap you, you become a liability, and Stark Industries has no use for liabilities. That's why I've hired Yakov. He has experience in teaching the things you'll need to learn. I expect you to do everything Yakov tells you to do, and since you're a genius, I expect you to not only obey, but _excel._ What happened last month will not happen again. Is that understood?"_

..

The numbers were everywhere. He could hardly see the walls anymore, just the numbers, whispering to him the amount of force he would have to use to kill himself by banging his head on the walls or the amount of force necessary to blow the walls apart. The latter was too high, so high that the greatest possibly of a successful escape was death, and his brain knew that. That was why it was subconsciously doing the math needed to kill himself. How hard he'd have to hit his head against the wall, how strong he had to make the knots to make a noose out of his blanket, the angle and force he'd need to snap his own neck—

His head hurt. They were too many numbers, and _it just wouldn't stop._ They just kept fading into existence, giving him irrelevant information. He was relapsing; he knew that, just like he knew what he'd have to do. This was what Yakov had trained him for, but he didn't want to rely on his training. He didn't want to, but he had to because it was, by his count, the sixth day and he'd already started relapsing. Things had gotten a bit easier now that he actually _knew_ what to do with the numbers, but he was pushing a week, and _he just couldn't do that._

He trudged towards the bars and pressed his forehead against the cool metal as hard as he could.

"I'll do it," he croaked to the guy guarding him.

_"The first thing you must do, Anton, is give up. You are weak, so the only way you can win is through deception. They must believe that they have broken you."_

..

Building a bomb from scratch wasn't hard. Tony should know. He'd been doing it since he was six.

_"Life is for the useful, Tony."_

He was alive, so he had to be useful, and what better way of being useful than building weapons for Stark Industries? And because he was useful, he couldn't die, not yet. No matter how much he was hurting—his palms were scratched, and his fingers were burnt and blistered—no matter how tired he was, no matter how much he wanted to just _sleep,_ he had to keep working. He was useful, so he had to live, and to live right now, he had to keep working, had to keep the numbers at bay before he went over the edge. He had to keep welding metal together and keep building the bomb because he was still useful and didn't have a reason to die yet, so he had to live.

At least the numbers were calming down. At least he'd managed to stop himself from relapsing any further.

..

It took four days to complete the prototype and two days for Muscles and his merry band to test it out. Within the next two and a half weeks, Tony perfected the bomb and built twenty more.

"They're beautiful," Muscles said, admiring the rows of bombs.

Tony didn't pay attention, instead choosing to look at the messes that were his hands. They were red and bleeding, swollen with dead skin beginning to peel off. He wasn't sure if it was a bad thing or not that he'd seen his hands in this state before. It was different now, though, because back at Stark Mansion, he at least had access to medical attention to treat his hands. Here, he didn't, and there was a high chance—_approximately eighty-seven percent_—that his wounds would get infected and a slim one—_approximately thirty-eight percent_—that doctors would have to amputate his hands. And if that happened, he wouldn't be able to build anymore, not when the prosthetics were absolute _shit_ because without hands, how the _hell_ was he supposed to make better prosthetics?

(He didn't consider the possibility that his dad might build him prosthetics, refused to consider it because the man was too busy for things like that, and Tony refused to siphon off his dad's time because he was too damn _weak_ to escape before the doctors had to amputate his hands.)

There was a slow burn of anger, the first real emotion he'd felt since his kidnapping—panic didn't count, it just … it didn't, okay?—and for a moment, a split second, he was _anticipating_ what would happen next.

"Take him back to his cell."

One of Muscles's goons grabbed him roughly by the arm—_approximate probability of bruises: ninety-four percent_—and dragged him away, walking too fast for his legs to follow without tripping over his feet.

There were soft, ruthless numbers whispering in his mind, telling him exactly how much time there was left.

Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight.

He and the goon walked around a corner.

Six. Five. Four. Three.

He stopped in his tracks.

Two.

"What the hell, kid?" the goon demanded, wrenching him forward.

One.

"Move!"

_Zero._

_Boom!_

The entire facility rocked from the force of the explosion, and he and the goon fell on their hands and knees. However, having expected it, Tony managed to recover quicker and lunged for the gun in the holster attached to the goon's right hip. While the goon was still disoriented, he put the gun barrel on the goon's head and fired—payback was a _bitch_—squeezing the trigger as he exhaled half a breath, just as he'd been trained.

_Thud._

From around the corner, Tony could see large flames, engulfing everything in its path. The ceiling began to crumble.

Time to make his escape.

..

He ran and ran and ran, and every time he came across a goon, he aimed and fired before the goon could react, taking full advantage of the element of surprise.

After all, no one ever expected an eleven-year-old to know how to use a gun, let alone how to use it correctly and actually shoot to kill.

_"Aim for the center mass, Anton."_

_Thud._

..

He didn't remember going to the police station. All he remembered was red, the smell of gunpowder and of burning human flesh, and walking through an icy-cold stream to wash away the traces of gunpowder.

_"No witnesses and no evidence, Anton."_

He'd walked for what felt like hours before he finally found a small town. It was well into the night, but the lampposts were lit, and he managed to find a police station, drenched, shivering, and exhausted. He'd only made it to the door before he passed out, breaking his nose with his fall.

In his defense, starvation, dehydration, fatigue, hypothermia, and more-than-likely infected wounds tended to do that to a person. It wasn't because he was weak.

..

He woke up to a fuzzy ceiling.

"Thank God."

_Dad?_

His dad was standing to the left of his bed with Obie by his side, and Tony noticed the dark circles under his dad's eyes. From the looks of it, his dad hadn't had a decent night's rest in weeks.

How weird. Before he'd been kidnapped, he hadn't heard that his dad had had any breakthroughs, so why did his dad look like that? Did something happen with the SI? Did his kidnapping somehow negatively affect the stocks?

"Hey, Tony, how're you feeling?" his dad asked softly.

He tried to reply, he really did, but he couldn't find the strength to talk, so he aimed for a nod instead. He must've succeeded because his dad replied, "Good."

"We knew you'd pull through," Obie said, which didn't surprise Tony. Obie was the one to teach him that life was for the useful, so of course he'd be the one to know that so long as Tony was still useful, he'd fight like hell to live.

"C'mon, Howard. We need to leave."

_No!_

The heart monitor, or whatever it was, betrayed his internal panic by beeping faster.

"I should stay a little longer," his dad said, looking at the monitor.

"Howard, I get that you don't want to leave Tony, but I can't cancel this meeting and we can't afford for you to skip it. Do you _want_ Hammer Industries to steal the contract we've been working on securing for the past four months?"

His dad hesitated, and for some reason, Tony's chest hurt, just like it did for all the other times his dad's schedule made him leave far sooner than Tony wanted.

"I have to go," his dad eventually said.

_I know._

But then his dad bent down and pressed a kiss on his forehead before leaving, and Tony watched with wide eyes as his dad and Obie, who said a quick "Get better soon, Tony," left the room.

He blinked.

His dad had never done that before.

..

"Anthony."

Tony jolted up from the bed, confused. Why was she here?

"Mom," he said, ignoring the pain that spiked through his chest.

"You were captured," she said flatly.

"I escaped," he replied, making his tone just as flat.

"You wouldn't need to escape if you weren't captured in the first place."

"You _expected_ me to get captured. Otherwise, you wouldn't have hired Yakov to begin with."

That seemed to silence whatever rebuke his mother had planned to make, and for once, his mother didn't have the last word. She turned on her heels and walked out without another word or glance, and like all the other times she'd walked out on him, he didn't feel a damn thing.

All he felt was the slick stickiness of blood on his hands. He'd done as he was trained, had deceived and killed all the terrorists in his path just like Yakov had trained him to, but he hadn't liked it. He still didn't if he was honest with himself, but he held his tongue.

He was a Stark. He was _strong._ He wasn't so weak that he couldn't take a little fire and blood. Really, he wasn't.

..

Tony was finally, _finally_ allowed out of the hospital after a week, and the first thing he asked for was steak.

Jennings, the greatest chef in the world—Tony didn't care who considered themselves the greatest chef 'cause it was obviously Jennings with his _amazing _steaks—complied and began to cook a large steak, medium rare just like Tony liked it. Except as soon as he smelled the meat cooking, all he could think about was the rigged bombs and burning flesh, and before he knew what he was doing, he was running to a bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before he threw up, emptying the meager contents of his stomach until he was dry heaving.

He didn't hear any footsteps coming after him.

Then again, he hadn't expected any.

..

Tony knew he shouldn't, knew how impolite it was, but nonetheless, he crept to his dad's study where he and Obie were meeting and hid behind the slightly-open door, eavesdropping. If they had had to relocate to have a conversation, it must be important, and Tony was curious.

"Relax, Howard. Tony's fine. He's just a bit rattled. He doesn't need a therapist, and he doesn't have PTSD. He's only been kidnapped, not sent to war. He'll be _fine._"

Tony didn't hear what his dad said, his mind too busy replaying what Obie had said in his head. Obie was right. He was being a baby about all of this. He was just kidnapped, nothing out of the ordinary, and he was making a big deal of it for no good reason.

He had to stop being such a weak baby.

..

The next evening, he asked for steak, medium rare, and forced himself to sit in the kitchen as Jennings cooked. He ate every bite, mumbled a soft "Thanks" to the chef, and walked casually to his room.

No one needed to know that he threw up again almost immediately afterwards.

..

_"Stark men are made of iron."_

No, they weren't. Iron, as hard as it was, as useful as it was, was too brittle. It broke too easily. It was _weak._ But Starks, Starks were strong. No matter how much pressure was put on them, no matter how much pain they were in, they didn't—_wouldn't_—break.

They were _tungsten._

..

_"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"_

A Stark.

_"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."_

* * *

Inspired by this prompt:

_For someone who was kidnapped by a group of terrorists, Tony was relatively calm._

_I want to read about Tony's previous kidnappings/kidnapping attempts. Maybe when he was a kid, or a teenager, perhaps when he was older and living by himself. As far as I know, he sort of met Happy while streetfighting/avoiding a beating-kidnapping._


End file.
